Samuel William Yorty (October 1, 1909 – June 5, 1998) was an American politician, attorney, and radio host from Los Angeles, California.

Elected as a Democrat to the California State Assembly in 1936, Yorty established himself as a politician with integrity, but watched his popularity plummet when he reported a bribery attempt on a pending bill.

That support haunted Yorty in 1938, when he was branded a communist by Folsom Prison inmate Arthur Kent during testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

That episode, plus the refusal of the local Communist Party to endorse him for mayor of Los Angeles that year, began a shift of Yorty's political beliefs.

Senator, when he ran unsuccessfully as a liberal internationalist against isolationist Republican and longtime incumbent Hiram Johnson, Yorty left politics during World War II to serve in the United States Army Air Corps in the Pacific Theater, attaining the rank of captain in the Intelligence Branch.

Although municipal elections in California are non-partisan, the resources of the party were directed against him when he ran for mayor of Los Angeles the following year against incumbent Republican Norris Poulson.

Roosevelt's campaign put up hundreds of billboards, handed out bales of bumper stickers and buttons, appeared often on television with 15-minute and half-hour shows, and was featured in so many other spots that his large presence in electronic media was criticized.

[3] Although Yorty was the first mayor to have a female deputy, Marion W. La Follette, and the first to have a racially integrated staff, his appeal did not extend to most of the city's large African-American population.

[citation needed] Support among the white middle classes fell after Yorty was embroiled in the controversy following the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel.

Continuing their adversarial relationship, the Times published an editorial cartoon by Paul Conrad lampooning this failure and Yorty responded with an unsuccessful lawsuit.

The charges were not plausible since Bradley had spent much of his career in the Los Angeles Police Department, but they resonated among fearful voters, and Yorty was re-elected.

After spending almost 40 percent of his time away from Los Angeles during the last half of 1971, Yorty announced on November 15 of that year that he was running for the Democratic nomination for President in 1972.

Yorty had received strong support from influential Manchester Union Leader publisher William Loeb, stating that President Nixon had "caved in" to anti-war senators and that he had never agreed with the government's policy on the war.

In response to the question of what he would do, Yorty noted that Dwight Eisenhower had helped bring an end to the Korean War by threatening to use nuclear weapons.

He finally ended his bid shortly before the California primary in June 1972, asking voters to support Humphrey because of the "radical" nature of anti-Vietnam War candidate George McGovern.

After leaving office, Yorty hosted a talk show on KCOP-TV for five years, later complaining that he was canceled in favor of the television program Hee Haw.

After leaving work on the small screen, he returned to the political arena, but failed in a comeback bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1980, having been defeated by the conservative Paul Gann, who in turn was badly beaten by incumbent liberal Democrat Alan Cranston.